Spatial localization of accumulations of oil and gas is an important scientific and commercial task tackled by geological science. As a result of this work, various methods and techniques have been created. These methods have the same purpose i.e. the forecasting of oil and gas resources based on such criteria as efficiency and, localizing of zones of highly permeable collecting basins. However, they use absolutely different methods and techniques.
There exists a well-known classical method of prospecting for oil and gas based on exploration of seismic profiles with the purpose of finding “traps”, i.e. natural reservoirs filled with oil and gas, with subsequent drilling of deep expensive wildcat wells, but only three of every ten “traps” contain commercial hydrocarbon deposits. The shortcoming of this method is the low rate of success in prospecting and high costs.
There exists another well-known method of prospecting for hydrocarbons based on seismic prospecting. This method suffers from relatively high costs i.e. the cost is 10 times higher than the method disclosed below. Further this method offers relatively low correlation with discovery of oil and gas. Some of the explanation lies with the fact that in physical terms the method is based on the phenomenon of formation of the trace of the diffusive flow above the accumulations of oil and gas. In such an approach errors can occur if the diffusive flow remains while oil or gas are absent. The method detects the fact of vertical migration of hydrocarbons rather than the deposits themselves.
There also exists another method titled “Method of detecting accumulations of hydrocarbons including oil fields, natural gas pools and gas condensate reservoirs and other deposits located at various depths, as well as contamination of the earth surface with hydrocarbons and other chemical substances based on remote sounding of the earth surface and bottom layer of the atmosphere differing from other methods in that it uses an ultraviolet wavelength band for remote sounding” (Registration number of application: 98109321/28 dated Sep. 27, 2000, RU). This method, however, does not provide for the obtaining direct information on manifestations of solids dispersion processes and development of geodynamic processes. The zones of dispersion are identified based on formal procedure of identification of crossing of lineaments, and as practice has shown in 75% of cases this procedure leads to errors. Further, the information received with the use of this method does not contain data on the location of the structure affected by dispersion in volumetric terms, and therefore it does not allow making conclusions on manifestations of processes of dispersion as a function of sections of deposits being explored. The method provides a low rate of successful confirmation of the results of the forecasts for zones of dispersion, especially in case of determination of the location of planned wells (not more than 0.20-25%) due to the shortcomings in the scientific substantiation of the model of formation of structures affected by thinning dispersion at the modem stage. The method suffers from a lack of the information on geoindicating factors of landscapes reflecting the features of the formation and manifestations of geofluid-dynamic processes, which are regarded as of first importance in the process of exploration of zones affected by dispersion processes. Finally, the method suffers from relatively high cost. A structural-geodynamic method of forecasting of localizing highly permeable porous-fractured collecting basins development zones and hydrocarbons deposits is based on the genetic correlation between certain features of landscapes with the existence of highly permeable porous-fractured collecting basins development zones and of hydrocarbons deposits, formed as a result of tectonic thinning dispersion of solids.
This method differs from other known methods in that it uses specific processing (“deciphering”) of information contained in photographs taken in the visible, infrared and heat wavelength bands and earth surface photometry as well as results of mathematical analysis of height profiles of landscapes, data on the structure of block fields of the objects being explored and optical characteristics of the landscape and allows to detect spectrometric and structural-geochemical anomalies. Then the processed data is compared with reference data and this allows making a conclusion on the productivity of oil and natural gas fields and the extent to which the explored object is developed in the context of the zones of highly permeable porous-fractured collecting basins.